


Carried Away

by heartsick_stranger



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Carrie Wilson Needs A Hug, Childhood Friends, F/F, Fluff, Gen, JATP Appreciation Week 2020, Not Beta Read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:41:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27355153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartsick_stranger/pseuds/heartsick_stranger
Summary: As a kid, Carrie had been a little more energetic and her smile had come more often and less forced.Sometimes Julie thinks she noticed the day it started becoming forced. Other days she tells herself that maybe she never knew Carrie at all.But at one point, she did.—Julie reflects on three of the major turning points in her relationship with Carrie before they stopped being friends.
Relationships: Flynn & Julie Molina & Carrie Wilson, Julie Molina & Carrie Wilson
Comments: 11
Kudos: 48
Collections: JATP Appreciation Week





	Carried Away

**Author's Note:**

> Am I suggesting that Carrie and Julie's split was partly because one of them (Carrie) had an unrequited crush? Maybe. Yes.
> 
> YES THE TITLE IS A PUN BECAUSE I ASKED MY BEST FRIEND FOR IDEAS AND THEY ARE A DORK SO: PUN!!!
> 
> Anyway I wrote this little exploration of how Carrie and Julie's relationship might've once been. I wrote this as a part of the JATP appreciation week that's going on on tumblr. The day 1 prompt was favorite character POV, so this is from Julie's POV! (I flipped a coin because I was stuck between Flynn and Julie, but I'll probably post the Flynn idea eventually.)

Julie doesn’t remember meeting Carrie Wilson for the first time. All she remembers is being childhood friends, which meant they were always repeating to each other how they’d be  _ best friends forever _ , as a reassurance that things would never change.

But change they did.

It wasn’t always for the worst, at first. Julie met Flynn and introduced her to Carrie, and though Carrie was a little bit shy at first, they warmed up to each other quickly enough. Their personalities weren’t always compatible, like when Carrie was upset and Flynn tried to hug her— which was the first time Flynn realized that Carrie wasn’t that comfortable with hugs, or much sort of physical contact at all, unless she initiated it. Flynn, on the other hand, was a very tactile person, always leaning on Julie’s shoulder and lovingly tackling her to the floor the same way that she did with her older brother and sister.

Flynn and Carrie had actually gotten along pretty well for a while, regardless of whether or not Julie was with them. As a kid, Carrie had been a little more energetic and her smile had come more often and less forced.

Sometimes Julie thinks she noticed the day it started becoming forced. Other days she tells herself that maybe she never knew Carrie at all.

But at one point, she did.

Julie remembers the first time they talked about forming their own music group. She and Flynn and Carrie were supposed to all have a sleepover together, but since Carrie couldn’t come over until two hours later, they had started the sleepover a little early. Within those two hours they came up with a song.

“Carrie!” Julie grinned when her dad opened the door, and Carrie stepped into the garage with her duffle bag, sleeping bag, and a wide grin. Carrie dropped her bags next to the doorway and ran over to where they were on the couch, sitting beside Julie. Julie and Flynn each had a marker in hand and a notepad in their laps, but Julie capped her marker and dropped it in favor of wrapping her arm around Carrie’s shoulder.

“Did you guys start the movie without me?” Carrie asked with a frown, her bottom lip jutting out in a pout.

“No way!” Julie shook her head vehemently. “We could never watch Tangled without you.”

“I thought we were watching Princess and the Frog,”

“We wouldn’t watch that without you either,” Flynn assured her, and Carrie smiled.

“Okay,” she nodded, and looked over at the notepad, “so what  _ were _ you doing?”

“Oh, we wrote a song!” Julie grinned and turned the notepad so Carrie could see it more easily. “Or, you know, we started one.”

Carrie tilted her head so she could read it, and Julie stared at her for a moment. It was only now that Carrie was finally sitting still that Julie realized her friend’s cheeks were pink and her eyes were slightly puffy.

“Carrie, are you okay?”

Carrie went a little stiff. “Yeah, my parents were just fighting again.”

“Oh, okay,” Julie said, quickly noting from Carrie’s demeanor that she was uncomfortable.

“So this song,” Carrie began, keeping her eyes focused on the notepad. “You two would be singing it?”

“Yeah! I was thinking we could be a band. Our name could be Double Trouble,” Flynn told her, and then added, “Do you want to join?”

Julie watched Carrie’s face again. She watched the way her friend’s eyes scanned the paper, and then the way she looked at Flynn and then at Julie, before looking back down.

“No, I think I wanna be a solo artist like my dad,” Carrie replied, her voice seeming to Julie like the rumbling start of a storm. “Double Trouble is a good name though!”

Years later, Julie tells herself that she heard the lack of energy in those statements.

It seems that, when reflecting on her past with Carrie, Julie tells herself a lot of things.

Carrie’s mom left the summer before fifth grade. Julie’s parents let Carrie stay over for the two weeks it took her dad to pull himself back together enough to take care of himself, and for the following week and a half it took him to pull himself back together enough to be able to take care of Carrie.

It was the first of July, and Julie and Flynn and Carrie had been planning to have lots of sleepovers anyway, but sleepovers were supposed to be temporary. Julie had a feeling that  _ living _ with your friend for almost four weeks because your parents couldn’t take care of her was a lot different.

Carlos was only three years old at that point, but he and Carrie got along. He liked watching her practice for her dance classes, which were unfortunately over for the summer, but he and Julie were the initial audience for the first time Carrie ever started seriously choreographing her own routines. Julie and Carrie had been friends for years, so they’d made funny songs and dances for themselves to show to their parents, but Julie knew from the determination in Carrie’s face while dancing that, while this was for fun, she was also serious about it.

Julie had started to feel the same way about music. She enjoyed it a lot, but she also really wanted people to hear it. The difference between her and Carrie was that Carrie wanted to be the best. Julie just wanted to be herself and have fun doing it.

That summer, Julie wrote one of her first more  _ real _ songs. Like many of the songs that her mother taught her, it was with a piano instrumental part.

She played it for Carrie three weeks after Carrie had finally gotten to go back home to her dad and her pink room and what Julie assumed was an unnervingly quiet, empty, large house.

Julie was in her room when Carrie arrived, sitting against her headboard doing math homework, and Carrie, like always—because Julie had always made it clear that she didn’t mind—jumped and belly-flopped on Julie’s bed, and then rolled over onto her back.

Carrie let out a sound that was somewhere between a groan and a sigh. “My dad made waffles again today. Is it bad that I wish he wouldn’t?”

“Hasn’t he been making waffles kind of a lot?”

“Yeah,” This time it was  _ definitely _ a sigh that came after her words. “I think he’s trying to say sorry. For being so sad.”

Julie furrowed her eyebrows. “Why would he try to apologize just for being sad?”

Carrie shrugged. “Because he feels bad that he wasn’t there for me, I guess,”

Carrie went quiet after that, and after a few moments Julie lied down next to Carrie on the bed. Carrie stayed still for a moment, and then Julie lifted one arm and Carrie rolled towards her until she was half on top of Julie, her left cheek flat on Julie’s chest.

Julie let out a quiet “oof,” and then just smiled, pulling Carrie a little closer and letting her other hand rest in Carrie’s hair.

“How are  _ you _ doing, Carrie-okie?”

Carrie scrunched her face up, her nose wrinkling and tickling Julie’s collar in a way that Julie almost giggled, because she was really ticklish. She didn’t laugh, though. She felt almost like she was holding her breath a little, so that her strawberry toothpaste-scented breath didn’t blow into Carrie’s face or hair.

“I don’t even  _ like _ karaoke that much,” she complained about the nickname, because that was always her defense, but Julie glanced down and could see her friend struggling to hide her smile.

With the hand that was already resting at the back of Carrie’s neck, Julie started running her hand through Carrie’s blonde hair, her fingers lightly tracing circles into Carrie’s scalp. Carrie hummed and relaxed a little more into Julie’s arms.

“Carrie,” Julie mumbled into Carrie’s hairline when she noticed that Carrie still hadn’t answered the question.

Carrie just groaned. “Can we not talk about my mom right now, please?”

“Okay,” Julie agreed easily, because Carrie was only supposed to be over for a few hours, and Julie wanted to make the most of it. “Another day,”

Carrie huffed, “Yeah, yeah, fine,” and then buried her face in Julie’s shirt again.

Julie remembered the song she’d written, and felt her breath seize in her chest a little as she remembered how she’d wanted to perform it for Carrie.

“Can we go to the garage?”

“But we’re all comfy here!” Carrie whined quietly, wrapping herself around Julie like a koala bear around a tree.

“I want to show you something,” Julie said with a grin. “We can come back here later!”

Julie waited for Carrie to respond, and let out a strained giggle when she felt Carrie sigh against her neck. Carrie looked at her questioningly, and Julie just laughed, “what? It tickles!”

Carrie stared into her eyes for another few moments, and then tightened her arms around Julie. “Five more minutes, and  _ then _ we can go to the garage.”

Julie grinned and ruffled Carrie’s hair, which received a quiet “hey!” in protest, and then Julie said, “Yeah, five more minutes.”

A few minutes passed. “Can you tell me what it is?”

“No.”

Carrie groaned. “Ju _ ju _ !”

Eleven minutes later, Julie took Carrie’s hand and together they ran down the stairs and out the front door of the Molina house, only stopping for a moment to call to Julie’s mom that they were going to the garage.

Julie’s mom had looked at them with a wide, knowing grin, told them that lunch would be ready in twenty minutes, and let them go.

When she sang the song for Carrie, it was with a smile, but because she was playing on the grand piano— she wasn’t yet as used to the plastic keys of the electric keyboard, and she thought the song sounded better on the grand piano anyway— she couldn’t see Carrie’s reaction until the end. Her fingers flew over the keys and, though it was difficult, she managed to sing at the same time. Her mom had offered to do the piano for it while Julie sang, but Julie had shook her head and asked her mom to help her practice.

She wanted Carrie to know that this was a song  _ directly _ from her, and that meant no parents in the room.

Julie wasn’t great at performing in front of others. Even with her family and Flynn and Carrie, it could be hard sometimes. But Julie pushed down the anxiety that tried to climb up her throat and sang out the song she’d written for her friend. She was pretty sure she messed up a few of the words, but that was okay.

Julie finished, and felt a moment of hesitation before her fingers finally lifted off the keys, like she was forcing herself to pull back against a magnetized energy that wanted her to keep playing, and then finally turned around to look at Carrie, who’d been sitting behind her on the couch the whole time. To her surprise, Carrie was crying.

She immediately got up and went to her friend’s side, being careful not to upset her with physical contact she wasn’t expecting. “Carrie? I didn’t mean to upset you—”

“You didn’t!” Carrie exclaimed, and Julie jumped a little at the volume of her voice. Carrie cleared her throat, wiped away her tears and dropped her hands back into her lap, looked down, and then said, more quietly, “you didn’t. I just…” She looked up at Julie. “Did you write that?”

“Yeah,” Julie replied quietly, reaching out slowly and gently brushing away a new tear that dripped down Carrie’s face. Carrie shut her eyes, smiling, and Julie smiled right back. It was nice to see Carrie’s smile. She hadn’t seen enough of it since Carrie’s mom left. “I wrote it for you,”

“Why?” Carrie asked almost immediately, and Julie frowned.

“Because you’re my best friend and I love you,” Julie told her, and was caught off-guard again when Carrie reached out and squeezed her into a hug. Julie’s hands came to Carrie’s back, and she traced a heart shape on Carrie’s lower back.

“I love you too, Juju,” Carrie said, and buried her face in Julie’s collar. Her voice was muffled as she said, “I swear I’ll love you forever,” and then Julie felt her heart stop as she heard Carrie rasp, “even if we stop being friends.”

Julie struggled to pull away from Carrie’s grasp, but she needed to say it to Carrie’s face, despite how hard it was to watch Carrie cry.

“Hey,” she said quietly, reaching for one of Carrie’s hands that sat in the girl’s lap and interlacing their fingers together. Carrie looked up at her, sniffling. “I’ll be your friend for as long as you still want to be mine, okay?”

Carrie looked at her with wide eyes, and Julie wondered if maybe Carrie didn’t believe her, but then Carrie squeezed Julie’s hand and smiled, sniffling again with a quiet, “okay.”

And maybe it was naive but, at the time, Julie thought Carrie felt the same way.

The end of sixth grade came around later on, and Julie had noticed throughout the year that she and Carrie hadn’t been hanging out as much. And Julie knew that that was how things went sometimes when people started middle school, based on a lot of tv shows and movies she’d seen and books she’d read and sad songs about losing childhood friends, but she didn’t want to let go of a good friendship without at least trying to salvage what was left of it.

So she texted Carrie and invited her over for a sleepover, two weekends after the school year ended. Carrie accepted and Julie was happy because the first and most daunting step was reaching out and getting Carrie’s response.

Julie ended up not doing much in the way of planning for the sleepover, but she told Flynn about it. Flynn had noticed Carrie drifting away too, and Flynn had been a little upset that she hadn’t been invited to the sleepover but Julie had been closer with Carrie than Flynn ever had, and probably still knew her better despite the difference of a year.

And Julie had told Flynn that she could come over in the morning, so Flynn begrudgingly agreed.

Eating dinner together was more stilted and awkward than it had ever been. Even in the weeks that Carrie had stayed with the Molinas after her mom left, it had never felt this strangely awkward and tense between them.

When they finally went to go to bed, Julie was disappointed that they hadn’t talked much. Carrie seemed way less energetic and bouncy now. She’d sat up straight throughout the entirety of dinner, and barely even laughed at one of Carlos’ dumb but simultaneously brilliant jokes.

Was this what it was like to grow up? Had Carrie already grown up without her?

But Julie told herself that couldn’t be, because both her parents were lively and energetic and loving and they were adults, so…

“Your dance group is really good,” Julie said aloud as Carrie was coming back in from brushing her teeth in the upstairs bathroom. There was a storm outside and Julie’s parents didn’t want them down in the garage. “Did you come up with all the routines?”

She looked over in time to see Carrie nod, albeit a little stiffly. “Yeah,” she responded, and straightened her back again. “Yeah, I did.”

“That’s really cool,” Julie grinned, and Carrie gave a strained smile back. “I think I’ve seen all your performances. That’s really awesome, Carrie.”

“You’ve seen all my— all  _ our _ performances?” Carrie started pulling out her sleeping bag, and Julie frowned. 

“Yeah, of course,” Julie replied, furrowing her eyebrows and frowning a bit when Carrie started pulling out her sleeping bag. “You know, you don’t have to sleep on the floor. There’s plenty of space on the bed.”

Carrie turned her head to look over at Julie, and Julie watched her hands freeze before they removed themselves from the still partially rolled-up sleeping bag.

“Are you sure?”

Julie shrugged. “We shared the bed whenever we were at your house.”

Carrie seemed to flinch a little at that. “Yeah, but—” She cut herself off, and it seemed for a minute like she was rotating between staring at her sleeping bag and then at the bed and then at Julie.

“Or I can take the floor, if it makes you more comfortable,” Julie offered. Her parents had raised her to be kind and she had no problem with sleeping in her sleeping bag on the floor to accommodate her guest.

Her friend.

“No, it’s fine,” Carrie shook her head, rolling her sleeping bag up again.

“Are you sure?”

“Julie,” Carrie stared at her, and Julie stared right back. “I’m not letting you sleep on the floor in your own room.”

Julie just shrugged and scooted over to the side of the bed that was closer to the window than to the door. She looked up at the ceiling, waiting for Carrie to come over.

When she finally did, she didn’t jump on the bed like she always had. Instead, Carrie picked up her sweater from the bag she’d brought and slowly walked over and sat down at the edge of the bed, pulling the sweatshirt on over her head and crawling under the covers. It looked to Julie like someone trying to get into freezing cold water without making a splash or shivering too much.

Julie wanted to know just how much things had really changed.

She opened one arm to Carrie and waited again. Carrie glanced over, and rather than rolling into Julie’s arms like she’d done in the past, she scooted over until she was just barely within arm’s reach and leaned her head on Julie’s shoulder. Julie just sighed and snaked one arm around her waist, to which Carrie squeaked, and Julie pulled her a bit closer and waited. If Carrie was uncomfortable she would make it known and pull herself away.

She didn’t.

Julie smiled as Carrie let out a deep exhale and wriggled slightly in Julie’s embrace so that she could bury her face in Julie’s neck, making Julie giggle. They both squeaked and flinched when they heard the booming of a thunderclap. Julie squeezed Carrie a bit by accident and Carrie tried to bury her face deeper in Julie’s neck, and it was only a few seconds later, once the shock of the loud thunder had passed, that she realized Carrie had reached out and taken hold of one of her hands.

Maybe this was what had changed. It felt different when Carrie held her hand like this.

They breathed together for a few moments. Julie squeezed Carrie’s hand gently until she seemed like she was breathing more easily, only for them both to jolt and squeeze each other again when the next thunderclap boomed, and Carrie laughed uneasily.

Julie breathed in and out a few times, only to find herself surprised when Carrie mumbled something into Julie’s shoulder.

“What did you say?” 

Carrie grunted and lifted her head up, then repeated herself. “You don’t call me Carrie-okie anymore,”

“You don’t come over anymore,”

Carrie pouted. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. I just missed you,” Julie told her, and tangled the fingers of her free hand in Carrie’s hair, tracing circles into her scalp like she always used to.

Carrie just sighed. “I missed you too,” she said, and squeezed Julie’s other hand that she was still holding. “It feels like a lot has happened this year and it’s… weird that we haven’t talked much.”

“Yeah,” Julie murmured in agreement.

A few minutes passed and they stayed like that, holding hands and clinging to each other through the storm, tightening their grips on each other like they were afraid the rain would wash the other away.

“You know how they legalized gay marriage two years ago?” Carrie asked, which, though it abruptly broke the silence, it was in such a quiet tone that Julie was hardly even startled by it. “It’s been legal in California for longer than that, but…”

“Yeah, what about it?”

Carrie buried her face into Julie’s shoulder again. “I think I like girls,”

Julie grinned. “Really? Me too,”

Because yeah, Julie was pretty sure she liked girls. She’d never really thought about crushes at all, but she was definitely not  _ just _ attracted to guys. She was definitely crushing on a girl in the grade above her who was in her math class.

Carrie stiffened in Julie’s arms, and Julie wondered if she had said something wrong, but she wasn’t going to push Carrie to say anything she didn’t want to. Carrie had said she missed her, yeah, but Julie wasn’t going to broach a subject that made Carrie uncomfortable and risk making Carrie want to leave.

“Cool,” Carrie buried her face back in Julie’s neck, but her voice was unnaturally high and cracked at the end of the one-word response.

Another clap of thunder came, louder than the previous two, and this time Julie flinched and squirmed so bad that she nearly squeezed Carrie’s ribs too hard.

“I, uh,”

Julie looked down to Carrie when she heard her friend start talking again, but Carrie was hiding her face again. Julie squeezed Carrie’s hand again and gently rapped a knuckle against Carrie’s head with her other hand that was still buried in Carrie’s hair.

“I think I like  _ you _ ,” Carrie admitted in a rasp that could hardly even be counted as a whisper. Julie had to strain her ears to hear it over the sound of the pouring rain outside her window.

Julie didn’t really know how to respond to that. She just pulled Carrie a little closer, held her hand a little tighter, and rested her forehead against Carrie’s.

They held each other through the night and slept through the storm.

Carrie wasn’t there to hold Julie through the next one.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me on tumblr @/heartsick-stranger


End file.
